Multiple interaction live monitoring

ABSTRACT

A system for multiple interaction live monitoring, comprising an interaction manager that receives an interaction from a contact center, a recording management server that monitors the interaction, and an administration interface that presents the monitored interaction for viewing by a human user, and a method for multiple interaction live monitoring.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

Application No. Date Filed Title Current Herewith MULTIPLE INTERACTIONLIVE application MONITORING Is a continuation of: 15/786,480 Oct. 17,2017 MULTIPLE INTERACTION LIVE MONITORING which is a continuation of:15/264,480 Sep. 13, 2016 MULTIPLE INTERACTION LIVE MONITORING which is acontinuation of: 14/822,901 Aug. 11, 2015 MULTIPLE INTERACTION LIVEMONITORING which is a continuation of: 14/299,025 Jun. 9, 2014 MULTIPLEINTERACTION LIVE Issued Issue date MONITORING 9,106,736 Aug. 11, 2015which claims benefit of, and priority to: 61/978,964 Apr. 13, 2014MULTIPLE INTERACTIVE LIVE MONITORING the entire specification of each ofwhich is incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Field of the Art

The disclosure relates to the field of contact center operations, andmore particularly to the field of monitoring contact center agents.

Discussion of the State of the Art

In the field of contact center operations, it is a common need tomonitor agents for such purposes as quality or performance review.Generally, this involves recording agent interactions (such as callrecording) for later review by a human analyst, and the analyst may needto review multiple recordings, possibly for multiple agents, greatlydelaying a review process. Additionally, reviewing recordings after aninteraction has occurred prevents any immediate action as might bedeemed necessary based on the nature of the recording, such asimmediately speaking to an agent if needed. A further issue may be thatof changing review policies, for example an agent may be scored on aprior interaction using current criteria that may not have been ineffect when the interaction took place, negatively impacting thereliability of review operations.

What is needed is a means to view multiple agent interactionssimultaneously, with the ability to view interactions as they areoccurring and as necessary provide interactive feedback to an ongoinginteraction.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Accordingly, the inventor has conceived and reduced to practice, in apreferred embodiment of the invention, a system and method for multipleinteraction live monitoring.

According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, a system formultiple interaction live monitoring comprising a recording managementserver that may monitor and record agent interactions (such as byrecording audio from a phone call or video recording of an agent'scomputer screen) of one or more agents and an administration server thatmay receive these agent recordings and present them for review such asvia an integral software review interface (as is described below in anexemplary configuration in FIG. 7), or an external or third-party reviewsystem such as via a software application programming interface (API) orother integration means, is disclosed. According to the embodiment,various traditional contact center components may be utilized inconnection with the components of the system, such as an interactivevoice response (IVR) system that may receive incoming customerinteractions (such as telephone calls) and may collect customerinformation via prompts (as is common practice in the art), an automatedcall distribution (ACD) server that may route interactions to specificagents for handling, or a computer telephony integration (CTI) serverthat may facilitate communication between computer and telephony-basednetworks.

According to the embodiment, an agent may receive an interaction (suchas when a customer places a telephone call to a contact center and it isrouted to an agent for handling), at which point a recording managementserver may begin monitoring the interaction. These interactions may bepresented as they are occurring to an administration server, such that areview analyst may view them concurrently, or they may optionally besent for storage in a database or other such storage means for laterreview, as is common practice in the art. In either case, anadministration server may present multiple recordings simultaneously forviewing, and may extract or retrieve relevant information such as theagent's name, a topic of an interaction (as might have been input by anagent after asking the customer probing questions), current agentactivities (such as whether or not a call is on hold), and also mayutilize various additional or external components such as speechanalytics systems or social media integration to provide additionalinformation such as a caller's social networking information or speechqualities that might be determined through software or hardware-basedspeech analysis (such as detecting whether a customer is irritated,excited or other emotional states, or detecting topics of conversationthat may not have been made available via other means). In this manner,the function of the system of the invention may be easily expanded asdesirable to include additional functions or to integrate with specificnew systems or services or those already in place, enabling ease ofintegration with current contact center operations.

In another preferred embodiment of the invention, a method for multipleinteraction live monitoring comprising the steps of receiving aninteraction (such as via an interaction manager), initiating monitoringof the interaction (such as utilizing a recording management server),determining interaction details (such as by receiving agent or customerinput, or via integration with various external resources such as socialmedia networks or additional contact center systems), and presenting theinteraction along with relevant details in a plural view with additionalinteractions and their details (such as via an administration server),is disclosed. According to the embodiment, interactions may be presentedto a human user for immediate viewing by a variety of means such as asoftware review interface integral to the administration server (as isdescribed below, referring to FIG. 7), or by presenting the interactionsto various external systems or services such as third-party reviewsoftware or storage systems such as databases, where interactions may bestored for future review as needed. It should be appreciated that whilereference may be made herein to specific methods of viewing and asenvisioned by the inventor the most benefit may be gained from liveviewing, the principle functionality of the invention (that is, thedisplay of multiple interactions and relevant details simultaneously formultiple interaction viewing) may be applied to stored or liveinteractions, or combinations thereof, interchangeably.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING FIGURES

The accompanying drawings illustrate several embodiments of theinvention and, together with the description, serve to explain theprinciples of the invention according to the embodiments. It will beappreciated by one skilled in the art that the particular embodimentsillustrated in the drawings are merely exemplary, and are not to beconsidered as limiting of the scope of the invention or the claimsherein in any way.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary hardwarearchitecture of a computing device used in an embodiment of theinvention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary logical architecturefor a client device, according to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing an exemplary architectural arrangementof clients, servers, and external services, according to an embodimentof the invention.

FIG. 4 is another block diagram illustrating an exemplary hardwarearchitecture of a computing device used in various embodiments of theinvention.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of an exemplary system architecture formultiple interaction live monitoring, according to a preferredembodiment of the invention.

FIG. 6 is a method flow diagram illustrating an exemplary method formultiple interaction live monitoring, according to a preferredembodiment of the invention.

FIG. 7 is an illustration of an exemplary interaction viewing interface,illustrating the presentation of multiple interactions and relevantdetails for viewing.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The inventor has conceived, and reduced to practice, in a preferredembodiment of the invention, a system and method for multipleinteraction live monitoring.

One or more different inventions may be described in the presentapplication. Further, for one or more of the inventions describedherein, numerous alternative embodiments may be described; it should beappreciated that these are presented for illustrative purposes only andare not limiting of the inventions contained herein or the claimspresented herein in any way. One or more of the inventions may be widelyapplicable to numerous embodiments, as may be readily apparent from thedisclosure. In general, embodiments are described in sufficient detailto enable those skilled in the art to practice one or more of theinventions, and it should be appreciated that other embodiments may beutilized and that structural, logical, software, electrical and otherchanges may be made without departing from the scope of the particularinventions. Accordingly, one skilled in the art will recognize that oneor more of the inventions may be practiced with various modificationsand alterations. Particular features of one or more of the inventionsdescribed herein may be described with reference to one or moreparticular embodiments or figures that form a part of the presentdisclosure, and in which are shown, by way of illustration, specificembodiments of one or more of the inventions. It should be appreciated,however, that such features are not limited to usage in the one or moreparticular embodiments or figures with reference to which they aredescribed. The present disclosure is neither a literal description ofall embodiments of one or more of the inventions nor a listing offeatures of one or more of the inventions that must be present in allembodiments.

Headings of sections provided in this patent application and the titleof this patent application are for convenience only, and are not to betaken as limiting the disclosure in any way.

Devices that are in communication with each other need not be incontinuous communication with each other, unless expressly specifiedotherwise. In addition, devices that are in communication with eachother may communicate directly or indirectly through one or morecommunication means or intermediaries, logical or physical.

A description of an embodiment with several components in communicationwith each other does not imply that all such components are required. Tothe contrary, a variety of optional components may be described toillustrate a wide variety of possible embodiments of one or more of theinventions and in order to more fully illustrate one or more aspects ofthe inventions. Similarly, although process steps, method steps,algorithms or the like may be described in a sequential order, suchprocesses, methods and algorithms may generally be configured to work inalternate orders, unless specifically stated to the contrary. In otherwords, any sequence or order of steps that may be described in thispatent application does not, in and of itself, indicate a requirementthat the steps be performed in that order. The steps of describedprocesses may be performed in any order practical. Further, some stepsmay be performed simultaneously despite being described or implied asoccurring non-simultaneously (e.g., because one step is described afterthe other step). Moreover, the illustration of a process by itsdepiction in a drawing does not imply that the illustrated process isexclusive of other variations and modifications thereto, does not implythat the illustrated process or any of its steps are necessary to one ormore of the invention(s), and does not imply that the illustratedprocess is preferred. Also, steps are generally described once perembodiment, but this does not mean they must occur once, or that theymay only occur once each time a process, method, or algorithm is carriedout or executed. Some steps may be omitted in some embodiments or someoccurrences, or some steps may be executed more than once in a givenembodiment or occurrence.

When a single device or article is described herein, it will be readilyapparent that more than one device or article may be used in place of asingle device or article. Similarly, where more than one device orarticle is described herein, it will be readily apparent that a singledevice or article may be used in place of the more than one device orarticle.

The functionality or the features of a device may be alternativelyembodied by one or more other devices that are not explicitly describedas having such functionality or features. Thus, other embodiments of oneor more of the inventions need not include the device itself.

Techniques and mechanisms described or referenced herein will sometimesbe described in singular form for clarity. However, it should beappreciated that particular embodiments may include multiple iterationsof a technique or multiple instantiations of a mechanism unless notedotherwise. Process descriptions or blocks in figures should beunderstood as representing modules, segments, or portions of code whichinclude one or more executable instructions for implementing specificlogical functions or steps in the process. Alternate implementations areincluded within the scope of embodiments of the present invention inwhich, for example, functions may be executed out of order from thatshown or discussed, including substantially concurrently or in reverseorder, depending on the functionality involved, as would be understoodby those having ordinary skill in the art.

Hardware Architecture

Generally, the techniques disclosed herein may be implemented onhardware or a combination of software and hardware. For example, theymay be implemented in an operating system kernel, in a separate userprocess, in a library package bound into network applications, on aspecially constructed machine, on an application-specific integratedcircuit (ASIC), or on a network interface card.

Software/hardware hybrid implementations of at least some of theembodiments disclosed herein may be implemented on a programmablenetwork-resident machine (which should be understood to includeintermittently connected network-aware machines) selectively activatedor reconfigured by a computer program stored in memory. Such networkdevices may have multiple network interfaces that may be configured ordesigned to utilize different types of network communication protocols.A general architecture for some of these machines may be describedherein in order to illustrate one or more exemplary means by which agiven unit of functionality may be implemented. According to specificembodiments, at least some of the features or functionalities of thevarious embodiments disclosed herein may be implemented on one or moregeneral-purpose computers associated with one or more networks, such asfor example an end-user computer system, a client computer, a networkserver or other server system, a mobile computing device (e.g., tabletcomputing device, mobile phone, smartphone, laptop, or other appropriatecomputing device), a consumer electronic device, a music player, or anyother suitable electronic device, router, switch, or other suitabledevice, or any combination thereof. In at least some embodiments, atleast some of the features or functionalities of the various embodimentsdisclosed herein may be implemented in one or more virtualized computingenvironments (e.g., network computing clouds, virtual machines hosted onone or more physical computing machines, or other appropriate virtualenvironments).

Referring now to FIG. 1, there is shown a block diagram depicting anexemplary computing device 100 suitable for implementing at least aportion of the features or functionalities disclosed herein. Computingdevice 100 may be, for example, any one of the computing machines listedin the previous paragraph, or indeed any other electronic device capableof executing software- or hardware-based instructions according to oneor more programs stored in memory. Computing device 100 may be adaptedto communicate with a plurality of other computing devices, such asclients or servers, over communications networks such as a wide areanetwork a metropolitan area network, a local area network, a wirelessnetwork, the Internet, or any other network, using known protocols forsuch communication, whether wireless or wired.

In one embodiment, computing device 100 includes one or more centralprocessing units (CPU) 102, one or more interfaces 110, and one or morebusses 106 (such as a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus). Whenacting under the control of appropriate software or firmware, CPU 102may be responsible for implementing specific functions associated withthe functions of a specifically configured computing device or machine.For example, in at least one embodiment, a computing device 100 may beconfigured or designed to function as a server system utilizing CPU 102,local memory 101 and/or remote memory 120, and interface(s) 110. In atleast one embodiment, CPU 102 may be caused to perform one or more ofthe different types of functions and/or operations under the control ofsoftware modules or components, which for example, may include anoperating system and any appropriate applications software, drivers, andthe like.

CPU 102 may include one or more processors 103 such as, for example, aprocessor from one of the Intel, ARM, Qualcomm, and AMD families ofmicroprocessors. In some embodiments, processors 103 may includespecially designed hardware such as application-specific integratedcircuits (ASICs), electrically erasable programmable read-only memories(EEPROMs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and so forth, forcontrolling operations of computing device 100. In a specificembodiment, a local memory 101 (such as non-volatile random accessmemory (RAM) and/or read-only memory (ROM), including for example one ormore levels of cached memory) may also form part of CPU 102. However,there are many different ways in which memory may be coupled to system100. Memory 101 may be used for a variety of purposes such as, forexample, caching and/or storing data, programming instructions, and thelike. It should be further appreciated that CPU 102 may be one of avariety of system-on-a-chip (SOC) type hardware that may includeadditional hardware such as memory or graphics processing chips, such asa Qualcomm SNAPDRAGON™ or Samsung EXYNOS™ CPU as are becomingincreasingly common in the art, such as for use in mobile devices orintegrated devices.

As used herein, the term “processor” is not limited merely to thoseintegrated circuits referred to in the art as a processor, a mobileprocessor, or a microprocessor, but broadly refers to a microcontroller,a microcomputer, a programmable logic controller, anapplication-specific integrated circuit, and any other programmablecircuit.

In one embodiment, interfaces 110 are provided as network interfacecards (NICs). Generally, NICs control the sending and receiving of datapackets over a computer network; other types of interfaces 110 may forexample support other peripherals used with computing device 100. Amongthe interfaces that may be provided are Ethernet interfaces, frame relayinterfaces, cable interfaces, DSL interfaces, token ring interfaces,graphics interfaces, and the like. In addition, various types ofinterfaces may be provided such as, for example, universal serial bus(USB), Serial, Ethernet, FIREWIRE™, THUNDERBOLT™, PCI, parallel, radiofrequency (RF), BLUETOOTH™, near-field communications (e.g., usingnear-field magnetics), 802.11 (WiFi), frame relay, TCP/IP, ISDN, fastEthernet interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, Serial ATA (SATA) orexternal SATA (ESATA) interfaces, high-definition multimedia interface(HDMI), digital visual interface (DVI), analog or digital audiointerfaces, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) interfaces, high-speedserial interface (HSSI) interfaces, Point of Sale (POS) interfaces,fiber data distributed interfaces (FDDIs), and the like. Generally, suchinterfaces 110 may include physical ports appropriate for communicationwith appropriate media. In some cases, they may also include anindependent processor (such as a dedicated audio or video processor, asis common in the art for high-fidelity A/V hardware interfaces) and, insome instances, volatile and/or non-volatile memory (e.g., RAM).

Although the system shown in FIG. 1 illustrates one specificarchitecture for a computing device 100 for implementing one or more ofthe inventions described herein, it is by no means the only devicearchitecture on which at least a portion of the features and techniquesdescribed herein may be implemented. For example, architectures havingone or any number of processors 103 may be used, and such processors 103may be present in a single device or distributed among any number ofdevices. In one embodiment, a single processor 103 handlescommunications as well as routing computations, while in otherembodiments a separate dedicated communications processor may beprovided. In various embodiments, different types of features orfunctionalities may be implemented in a system according to theinvention that includes a client device (such as a tablet device orsmartphone running client software) and server systems (such as a serversystem described in more detail below).

Regardless of network device configuration, the system of the presentinvention may employ one or more memories or memory modules (such as,for example, remote memory block 120 and local memory 101) configured tostore data, program instructions for the general-purpose networkoperations, or other information relating to the functionality of theembodiments described herein (or any combinations of the above). Programinstructions may control execution of or comprise an operating systemand/or one or more applications, for example. Memory 120 or memories101, 120 may also be configured to store data structures, configurationdata, encryption data, historical system operations information, or anyother specific or generic non-program information described herein.

Because such information and program instructions may be employed toimplement one or more systems or methods described herein, at least somenetwork device embodiments may include nontransitory machine-readablestorage media, which, for example, may be configured or designed tostore program instructions, state information, and the like forperforming various operations described herein. Examples of suchnontransitory machine-readable storage media include, but are notlimited to, magnetic media such as hard disks, floppy disks, andmagnetic tape; optical media such as CD-ROM disks; magneto-optical mediasuch as optical disks, and hardware devices that are speciallyconfigured to store and perform program instructions, such as read-onlymemory devices (ROM), flash memory (as is common in mobile devices andintegrated systems), solid state drives (SSD) and “hybrid SSD” storagedrives that may combine physical components of solid state and hard diskdrives in a single hardware device (as are becoming increasingly commonin the art with regard to personal computers), memristor memory, randomaccess memory (RAM), and the like. It should be appreciated that suchstorage means may be integral and non-removable (such as RAM hardwaremodules that may be soldered onto a motherboard or otherwise integratedinto an electronic device), or they may be removable such as swappableflash memory modules (such as “thumb drives” or other removable mediadesigned for rapidly exchanging physical storage devices),“hot-swappable” hard disk drives or solid state drives, removableoptical storage discs, or other such removable media, and that suchintegral and removable storage media may be utilized interchangeably.Examples of program instructions include both object code, such as maybe produced by a compiler, machine code, such as may be produced by anassembler or a linker, byte code, such as may be generated by forexample a Java™ compiler and may be executed using aJava virtual machineor equivalent, or files containing higher level code that may beexecuted by the computer using an interpreter (for example, scriptswritten in Python, Perl, Ruby, Groovy, or any other scripting language).

In some embodiments, systems according to the present invention may beimplemented on a standalone computing system. Referring now to FIG. 2,there is shown a block diagram depicting a typical exemplaryarchitecture of one or more embodiments or components thereof on astandalone computing system. Computing device 200 includes processors210 that may run software that carry out one or more functions orapplications of embodiments of the invention, such as for example aclient application 230. Processors 210 may carry out computinginstructions under control of an operating system 220 such as, forexample, a version of Microsoft's WINDOWS™ operating system, Apple's MacOS/X or iOS operating systems, some variety of the Linux operatingsystem, Google's ANDROID™ operating system, or the like. In many cases,one or more shared services 225 may be operable in system 200, and maybe useful for providing common services to client applications 230.Services 225 may for example be WINDOWS™ services, user-space commonservices in a Linux environment, or any other type of common servicearchitecture used with operating system 210. Input devices 270 may be ofany type suitable for receiving user input, including for example akeyboard, touchscreen, microphone (for example, for voice input), mouse,touchpad, trackball, or any combination thereof. Output devices 260 maybe of any type suitable for providing output to one or more users,whether remote or local to system 200, and may include for example oneor more screens for visual output, speakers, printers, or anycombination thereof. Memory 240 may be random-access memory having anystructure and architecture known in the art, for use by processors 210,for example to run software. Storage devices 250 may be any magnetic,optical, mechanical, memristor, or electrical storage device for storageof data in digital form (such as those described above, referring toFIG. 1). Examples of storage devices 250 include flash memory, magnetichard drive, CD-ROM, and/or the like.

In some embodiments, systems of the present invention may be implementedon a distributed computing network, such as one having any number ofclients and/or servers. Referring now to FIG. 3, there is shown a blockdiagram depicting an exemplary architecture 300 for implementing atleast a portion of a system according to an embodiment of the inventionon a distributed computing network. According to the embodiment, anynumber of clients 330 may be provided. Each client 330 may run softwarefor implementing client-side portions of the present invention; clientsmay comprise a system 200 such as that illustrated in FIG. 2. Inaddition, any number of servers 320 may be provided for handlingrequests received from one or more clients 330. Clients 330 and servers320 may communicate with one another via one or more electronic networks310, which may be in various embodiments any of the Internet, a widearea network, a mobile telephony network (such as CDMA or GSM cellularnetworks), a wireless network (such as WiFi, Wimax, LTE, and so forth),or a local area network (or indeed any network topology known in theart; the invention does not prefer any one network topology over anyother). Networks 310 may be implemented using any known networkprotocols, including for example wired and/or wireless protocols.

In addition, in some embodiments, servers 320 may call external services370 when needed to obtain additional information, or to refer toadditional data concerning a particular call. Communications withexternal services 370 may take place, for example, via one or morenetworks 310. In various embodiments, external services 370 may compriseweb-enabled services or functionality related to or installed on thehardware device itself. For example, in an embodiment where clientapplications 230 are implemented on a smartphone or other electronicdevice, client applications 230 may obtain information stored in aserver system 320 in the cloud or on an external service 370 deployed onone or more of a particular enterprise's or user's premises.

In some embodiments of the invention, clients 330 or servers 320 (orboth) may make use of one or more specialized services or appliancesthat may be deployed locally or remotely across one or more networks310. For example, one or more databases 340 may be used or referred toby one or more embodiments of the invention. It should be understood byone having ordinary skill in the art that databases 340 may be arrangedin a wide variety of architectures and using a wide variety of dataaccess and manipulation means. For example, in various embodiments oneor more databases 340 may comprise a relational database system using astructured query language (SQL), while others may comprise analternative data storage technology such as those referred to in the artas “NoSQL” (for example, Hadoop Cassandra, Google BigTable, and soforth). In some embodiments, variant database architectures such ascolumn-oriented databases, in-memory databases, clustered databases,distributed databases, or even flat file data repositories may be usedaccording to the invention. It will be appreciated by one havingordinary skill in the art that any combination of known or futuredatabase technologies may be used as appropriate, unless a specificdatabase technology or a specific arrangement of components is specifiedfor a particular embodiment herein. Moreover, it should be appreciatedthat the term “database” as used herein may refer to a physical databasemachine, a cluster of machines acting as a single database system, or alogical database within an overall database management system. Unless aspecific meaning is specified for a given use of the term “database”, itshould be construed to mean any of these senses of the word, all ofwhich are understood as a plain meaning of the term “database” by thosehaving ordinary skill in the art.

Similarly, most embodiments of the invention may make use of one or moresecurity systems 360 and configuration systems 350. Security andconfiguration management are common information technology (IT) and webfunctions, and some amount of each are generally associated with any ITor web systems. It should be understood by one having ordinary skill inthe art that any configuration or security subsystems known in the artnow or in the future may be used in conjunction with embodiments of theinvention without limitation, unless a specific security 360 orconfiguration system 350 or approach is specifically required by thedescription of any specific embodiment.

FIG. 4 shows an exemplary overview of a computer system 400 as may beused in any of the various locations throughout the system. It isexemplary of any computer that may execute code to process data. Variousmodifications and changes may be made to computer system 400 withoutdeparting from the broader spirit and scope of the system and methoddisclosed herein. CPU 401 is connected to bus 402, to which bus is alsoconnected memory 403, nonvolatile memory 404, display 407, I/O unit 408,and network interface card (NIC) 413. I/O unit 408 may, typically, beconnected to keyboard 409, pointing device 410, hard disk 412, andreal-time clock 411. NIC 413 connects to network 414, which may be theInternet or a local network, which local network may or may not haveconnections to the Internet. Also shown as part of system 400 is powersupply unit 405 connected, in this example, to ac supply 406. Not shownare batteries that could be present, and many other devices andmodifications that are well known but are not applicable to the specificnovel functions of the current system and method disclosed herein. Itshould be appreciated that some or all components illustrated may becombined, such as in various integrated applications (for example,Qualcomm or Samsung SOC-based devices), or whenever it may beappropriate to combine multiple capabilities or functions into a singlehardware device (for instance, in mobile devices such as smartphones,video game consoles, in-vehicle computer systems such as navigation ormultimedia systems in automobiles, or other integrated hardwaredevices).

In various embodiments, functionality for implementing systems ormethods of the present invention may be distributed among any number ofclient and/or server components. For example, various software modulesmay be implemented for performing various functions in connection withthe present invention, and such modules may be variously implemented torun on server and/or client components.

Conceptual Architecture

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of an exemplary system architecture 500 forsecure live viewing of multiple interactions, according to a preferredembodiment of the invention. As illustrated, a contact center 510 may beconnected to a communications network 501 such as the Internet or apublic switched telephone network (PSTN), and may comprise a variety oftraditional system components such as a computer telephony integration(CTI) server 511 that may facilitate communication between telephony andcomputer-based networks such as the Internet, an interactive voiceresponse (IVR) system 512 that may receive incoming customer interactionsuch as telephone calls and may receive customer input (such as promptsto select a reason for calling for example, as is common practice in theart), and an automated call distribution (ACD) server 513 that may routecustomer interactions such as to ensure they reach an agent for properhandling.

As further illustrated, a system for multiple interaction livemonitoring 520 may be connected to and in communication with a contactcenter 510, or may be a system operated by a contact center such thatthe system for multiple interaction live monitoring 520 functions as acomponent of contact center 510. It should be appreciated that thesystem 520 is shown separately in a connected fashion for clarity, and avariety of arrangements may be possible according to the embodiment(such as a system 520 operated by a third party and provided as aservice to one or more contact centers, for example). A system formultiple interaction live monitoring 520 may comprise an interactionmanager 521 that may receive information relevant to an interaction(such as from a CTI server 511, an IVR 512, an ACD server 513 or bydirect connection to agent workstations to monitor an interaction inprogress), a recording management server 522 that may monitorinteractions and provide interaction details (such as audio or video, ordetailed information received from an interaction manager 521) to anadministration interface 523 that may then present the interaction foreither viewing or storage interchangeably, or both simultaneously (suchas for a human analyst to observe an interaction while also storing acopy for future reference). In this manner, it can be appreciated thatvarious contact center components may collect and process information onan interaction according to their normal functions, and that aninteraction manager 521 may collect and aggregate this information tomake it available for easier viewing, and a recording management server522 may make multiple interactions presentable in an organized fashion,such as via a monitoring interface as illustrated later (referring toFIG. 7). It should also be appreciated that various external systems maybe connected to or integrated with the operation of a system 520, suchas third-party monitoring tools or services or external storage meanssuch as databases 530 or physical storage devices, or any other suchexternal components that may be connected via hardware (such as via aphysical or wired connection, or via a communications network) orsoftware means (such as via an API or other such software integrationmeans), as are common in the art. In this manner, it can be appreciatedthat the function of a system 520 may be provided as a service tocontact centers by making it available for integration or connection totheir existing systems, and it should therefore also be appreciated thata single system 520 may provide utility to multiple contact centerssimultaneously.

Detailed Description of Exemplary Embodiments

FIG. 6 is a method flow diagram illustrating an exemplary method 600 forsecure live viewing of multiple interactions, according to a preferredembodiment of the invention. In an initial step 601, an interaction isreceived, such as via an interaction manager, for example from a contactcenter's ACD or other interaction routing component. When an interactionis received, in a next step 602 monitoring may be initiated of theinteraction (such as utilizing a recording management server), such thatas the interaction is handled it may be monitored “live” or while it isongoing, as well as enabling the optional storage of the interaction bypreserving the monitored recording for future reference (described laterin an optional end step). In a next step 603, an interaction manager maydetermine interaction details such as by receiving agent or customerinput (for example from an IVR, or directly from an agent's workstationsuch as when an agent types in notes or other input based on theinteraction in progress), or via integration with various externalresources such as social media networks or additional contact centersystems, and in a next step 604 presents the interaction along withrelevant details in a plural view (that is, alongside other interactionsthat may have been received currently or previously, therebyincorporating the current interaction into an ongoing presentation ofmultiple interactions as needed) with additional interactions and theirdetails (such as via an administration server). In an optional end step605, the interaction may be stored for future reference, such as in adatabase or other storage medium as appropriate. It should beappreciated that various aspects of the operation described may beconfigurable, such as via manual input from a review analyst (forexample, via an interaction monitoring interface as described below,referring to FIG. 7, or by loading a stored configuration from adatabase, for example), such as how to present interaction information(or which information to present, for example tailoring the nature ofthe monitoring to suit a specific review use), or to select how manyinteractions to display, or how to arrange them, or any other suchconfiguration as may be deemed relevant to operation by a contact centerin general or by an analyst in particular.

FIG. 7 is an illustration of an exemplary interaction viewing interface700, illustrating the presentation of multiple interactions and relevantdetails for viewing. As illustrated, a main windows 710 a, 710 b may bedisplayed, and may comprise (for example) a view of video capture froman interaction (such as a view of an agent's computer screen 711, or adisplay of a video call in progress showing one or more partiesinvolved), or an audio placeholder such as a waveform 712, ininteractions that have no video. Next to a main display, a variety ofrelevant details for an interaction may be shown, such as an agent'sname or other identifier 721 (such as an agent ID), the current runtimeof the interaction 722, a current interaction state or activity 723(such as indicating that an agent has placed a customer on hold 723 b),or any of a variety of customer or interaction-specific informationdetails 724 such as customer name, interaction topic, or variousexternal information that may be available through the use of connectedsystems such as social media networks or contact center systems such ascustomer account information, or any other such information that may berelevant to an interaction in general or to a review operation inparticular.

Additionally, any combination of details shown may be made interactive,such that an analyst viewing an interaction may click or otherwiseinteract with the interface to perform operations such as to expand aninteraction view (for example, to enlarge it and minimize otherinteractions so a user may focus on a particular interaction), toprovide feedback to an agent during an interaction, to notify asupervisor of an agent in need of coaching or assistance, or to viewadditional information related to the agent, customer, or interaction orto change the manner in which information is displayed (such as tocustomize the display for a single interaction, or to modify the displayfor all interactions going forward). In this manner, a monitoringinterface 700 may serve as a communication interface between an analystand agents as needed, facilitating immediate feedback on reviewoperations rather than providing feedback to an agent at a later timewhen they may have forgotten about a specific interaction (as is commonpractice in the art, when interactions are stored and reviewed at alater time rather than viewed while in progress).

An additional feature of a live display of an interaction as describedherein, may be the use of monitoring for key performance indicators(KPIs) such as specific phrases or actions that may indicate performanceissues or coaching opportunities that should be addressed, as well asmonitoring agent behavior such as to ensure that they are focused on aninteraction and following operational procedures (such as not usingtheir workstation for personal use during an interaction, for exampleviewing blacklisted webpages, playing games, or othernon-interaction-related activity). In this manner, a display mayindicate agents that are not following interaction-related activities,such as by displaying a visual indicator 730 to notify a viewer that anagent is not paying attention or is performing restricted activitiesduring an interaction, or optionally an audio notification such as atone or verbal cue may be sounded, or other such indicators that may beused to get the attention of a viewer and direct them to the specificagent in question. It should be appreciated that while reference is madeto indicating agents performing restricted activities, such anindication may be made for a variety of purposes such as any form ofsorting or ordering of interactions, or indicating an interaction to auser for ease of location for various purposes, or for indicatinginteractions optionally matching a search query submitted by a user(such as to pick out a particular interaction from a display of numerousinteractions, rather than manually searching for it), or any other suchpurpose that may make use of an indication or notificationfunctionality.

The skilled person will be aware of a range of possible modifications ofthe various embodiments described above. Accordingly, the presentinvention is defined by the claims and their equivalents.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for multiple simultaneous interactionlive monitoring, comprising the steps of: receiving a plurality ofinteractions and a plurality of interaction details for each receivedinteraction, the interaction details comprising information descriptiveof the content of an interaction; recording the plurality ofinteractions received and associating the plurality of interactiondetails with their respective recordings; sending the plurality ofinteractions and their associated plurality of interaction details forpresentation via a network; and presenting the sent plurality ofinteractions with their associated interaction details simultaneously ina multiple interaction display for live monitoring by a human user. 2.The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of interactions and theirassociated plurality of interaction details are sent via a network tocontact center agents using an automated call distributor.
 3. The methodof claim 1, wherein the plurality of interactions comprises an audiblecustomer interaction.
 4. The method of claim 3, wherein the plurality ofinteraction details comprises interaction details for the audiblecustomer interaction.
 5. The method of claim 4, wherein the plurality ofinteraction details comprises additional interaction details collectedfrom publicly available information sources.
 6. The method of claim 5,wherein the publicly available information sources comprise a socialnetwork.
 7. The method of claim 4, wherein the plurality of interactiondetails comprises additional interaction details collected from privateinformation sources.
 8. The method of claim 7, wherein the privateinformation sources comprise a customer service management system.